But Hardwick wasn’t biting:
You can accept my information or we can stop now. But this will be by my timetable, not yours. If it gives you any comfort, I believe three more face-to-face meetings with my couriers should be sufficient.
The first of those three was the Ireland meeting. Then the DDNI had been killed, and the next two hadn’t happened.
Quinn read through everything again, then set it all on the table and reached over and turned the light off. He sipped his beer as the night washed over him. Though it was a few minutes before 2 a.m., he could still hear the distant rumble of traffic.
He leaned back, resting the bottle against his chest, and let all he’d absorbed drift through his mind. He didn’t force any connections, just let things simmer.
He didn’t remember closing his eyes, but he did remember the last image that passed through his thoughts before he fell asleep.
Marion Dupuis in an old, beat-up Saab, looking out her window at him, her eyes wide. And in the back seat, movement. A body now, coming into focus. Small.
A child. A child …
Quinn woke at first light with the realization that he had yet to call his mother. He also realized that he’d spent the entire night in the chair on his balcony. Carefully he sat up and retrieved his phone. Given the two-hour time difference, he knew his mother would be up, so he dialed her number. But the answering machine picked up. He left a lame message, promising to be there as soon as he could.
“Shit,” he said to himself after he hung up. He felt like an idiot, but it wasn’t like he could call back and rerecord it.
He stood up, every muscle in his body aching, and made his way back upstairs to the kitchen.
Nate was already there.
“Peter came through,” Nate said.
“Did you sleep?” Quinn asked.
“Enough.”
He handed Quinn a printout of an email.
Yellowhammer. Naval test facility loosely associated with the old Naval Ordnance Testing Station, later the Naval Weapons Center, at China Lake. Actual location just north of the city of Lone Pine, near site of Manzanar Japanese internment camp. (Map attached.)
Decommissioned in December 1964. Security of facility had been maintained by government contractor Colstar until last year, when contract was picked up by Cameron-Kadash Industries. I’ve included the blueprints of the facility, but note that they are over fifty years old.
Might be their ops center. Find out.
Keep me updated.
Peter
“Did you print out the blueprints?” Quinn said.
Nate pushed himself out of his chair and stood up. The sight of Nate’s bare stump surprised Quinn. Since his apprentice had received his new prosthetic, Quinn had never seen him without it on. It had seemed like Nate wanted Quinn to forget the real leg was even missing. But now, as he hopped over to the printer hidden in a cabinet along the wall, Quinn couldn’t help but remember the pain Nate had been in, and the months of therapy and training he had gone through to get himself back in shape.
“What?” Nate said as he hopped back, holding a few pieces of paper in his hands.
“Nothing.”
“I just haven’t put it on yet,” Nate said, his tone defensive. “I wanted to check if we heard from Peter first. Is that all right?”
“It’s fine.”
“You don’t look like it’s fine.”
“Sorry,” Quinn said. “It’s just been a while … you know … since I’ve seen you without it.”
“I see it that way every day,” Nate said. “It’s the way it is. It’s not growing back.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Then accept it. And accept the fact that I’m still good enough to do this.” He shoved the papers at Quinn, not waiting for a response. “Here.”
Quinn took them, then said, “I’m getting there.”
“Yeah, well. I guess we’ll see, won’t we?” Nate stared at him for a moment, then sat back down. “The first two are the Yellowhammer blueprints. The last is the map.”
Quinn, not knowing what else to say, looked at the printouts. The facility was built underground at the base of the Sierra Nevada. There were two levels, each containing several rooms connected by corridors. There were limited living quarters inside, and barracks for two hundred additional workers located aboveground. But a note on the blueprint indicated that the ground-level quarters had been removed at the time of decommissioning.
Now the only aboveground signs of the facility were four air vents, and a structure that hid the main entrance. There was an additional way in, an emergency entrance. But it was hidden in a rock crevice wide enough for only one person to pass through at a time.
This didn’t shed any light on what the current inhabitants might be up to, but it did give Quinn their location.
“This looks like it’s going to be fun,” Nate said, his earlier defensive tone gone.
“Loads,” Quinn agreed.
He rolled his shoulders back, trying to loosen the muscles in his back that hadn’t expected to spend the night sitting in a chair outside. He took a closer look at the second page. It was the lower level of the complex, designated R2.
“I think this is some kind of laboratory,” he said.
“Maybe seventy years ago,” Nate said. “Who knows what they’re using it for now?”
“True. They could be just using the main level.”
“The main level of what?” The voice had come from behind them.
Quinn and Nate turned.
Orlando was standing at the edge of the kitchen. She was dressed and, except for the large white bandage covering her wound, looked almost normal.
Quinn pulled out one of the kitchen chairs, then took a few steps toward her.
“You shouldn’t be walking around,” he said.
“It’s not my leg that got hurt,” she said, then looked at Nate. “No offense.”
“Hey, I get it,” he said. “No worries.”
She walked over to the table and looked down at the blueprints. “What are those?”
“Blueprints,” Quinn said.
“No kidding,” she said, all but calling him an idiot. “Of what?”
“Yellowhammer,” Nate said.
“So this is where they are,” she said.
“So it would seem,” Quinn said.
They were all silent for several moments.
“What are we waiting for?” Orlando asked.
“Nate and I were just leaving,” Quinn said.
“We were?” Nate asked.
Quinn ignored him and looked at Orlando. “You, though, are staying here.”
“The hell I am.”
“You need rest, not a four-hour ride in the car.”
“I’m going,” she said.
“We can do this without you.”
“If I were anyone else, you’d expect me to continue on the project.”
Her eyes narrowed, daring him to contradict her. But Quinn couldn’t.
“Put me in the back seat,” she said, her tone softening a notch. “Nate, grab me a pillow.”
Nate pushed himself out of the chair. “Thick or thin?”
“Thin, please.”
“Hold on,” Quinn said.
“What?” Orlando asked. “It’s all settled.”
“Nothing’s settled,” Quinn told her.
“It’s settled.”
Quinn started to open his mouth, but stopped. Why the hell was everyone arguing with him this morning? He felt like going back to bed and forgetting the whole thing. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option.
And as far as Orlando going along, like she said, it was settled.
CHAPTER
25
BEFORE LEAVING THE CITY, THEY FILLED THE TRUNK of Quinn’s BMW with gear they thought they might need. Ropes, clamps, gloves, and carabiners they picked up at a mountaineering store on Pico Boulevard. Crowbars, listening gear, explosive charges, and other specialized items they got out of Quinn’s storage facility near Venice Beach.
Once they were finished, they headed north, taking first the 405 freeway, then Highway 14 into the upper Mojave Desert.
About two and a half hours into the trip, a desert valley opened up off to their right.
“According to the map, that should be China Lake,” Nate said, then paused for a moment. “Everything’s so … tan. Summers here must be killers.”
“I think there’s a certain beauty to it,” Orlando said.
“Sure. Okay, if you say so,” Nate said. “Anyway, when the government controlled Yellowhammer, the navy station at China Lake had administrative jurisdiction.”
They fell silent again as they transitioned onto Highway 395 and left the desert for the higher-elevation scrubland that would be with them the rest of the way. Outside, the temperature dropped a few degrees every twenty minutes. At this time of year it wasn’t a drastic difference, but Quinn knew that unlike the desert they’d just passed through, this area would be touched by snow a few times every winter. Perhaps not a lot, but enough. And with the new valley being so narrow, Quinn could imagine winds whipping between the mountain ranges, making life miserable.
It took another hour before they passed a sign indicating they were a few miles from the town of Lone Pine. That got everyone moving. Lone Pine was the gateway to the Alabama Hills and would serve as their base.
Here the Sierra Nevada felt like an impenetrable rock wall miles high, its jagged skyline daring anyone to try and cross it. One of the peaks, Quinn wasn’t sure which, was Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the lower forty-eight states. It was rugged country, and, on that aspect alone, the perfect place to build a facility you didn’t want anyone to know about.
To Quinn it looked just like what it was, a sleepy town of around two thousand, living off the tourists who came to see the mountains or were passing through on their way to the Mammoth Mountain Ski Resort another two hours farther north. The highway acted as Main Street, and played host to most of the businesses Lone Pine had to offer. A grocery store, a few bars, some restaurants, a couple of gas stations.
“There’s the motel,” Nate said, pointing ahead and to the right.
Quinn saw it. The Dow Villa Motel. Nate had made reservations before they left L.A.
Quinn parked near the motel’s office, then waited in the car with Orlando while Nate went inside to check in. While the sketch of Quinn from New York hadn’t been in the news for the last twenty-four hours, he still felt the need to keep a low profile.
“How you feeling?” he asked Orlando.
She hesitated, then said, “I’m fine.”
“You’re cute when you lie,” he said.
“I’m fine, really,” she said. “You want to know if it hurts? Of course it does. But I’m fine.”
They were silent for a few moments.
“I assume you want to do a recon,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Then we can just drop off our bags and go.”
“You’re staying here,” Quinn said.
“I said I was fine.”
“I know you did. But you could use some rest. You look exhausted.”
“I don’t want to argue with you about this,” she said.
“I don’t want to argue, either. But this first trip out, we’re just going to do a scout. That I don’t need you for.”
The look on her face was far from happy. “I can stay in the car. Monitor communications. Something might go wrong. You’ll need me there.”
“No,” Quinn said. “We won’t. We’re not going to get close enough for anything to go wrong.”
She leaned back into her seat, her lips pressed together and her eyes drilling a hole in the center of Quinn’s forehead.
“Come on. Don’t be stupid. You don’t have all your strength back yet. You know that. I will need you, and when I do I’ll need you fully rested. Going out now with us will drain you, and that I don’t need.”
“Fine,” she said, her tone indicating it was anything but.
“You know I’m right.”
Before she could respond, the car door opened and Nate climbed back in.
“Our rooms are toward the back,” Nate said, holding up two key cards. “Rooms 4 and 5. The guy inside said there’s parking right in front of them.”
Before Quinn could turn around to restart the car, Orlando snatched one of the keys from Nate, then looked at Quinn.
“I’ll take this room,” she said. “You can stay with Nate.”
The terrain north of Lone Pine was similar to that which they had just been driving through for the past hour, except for one large exception. To the left, between the highway and the Sierras, were the Alabama Hills, a rolling pile of granite and volcanic rocks. To Quinn it looked like a dump of surplus material someone decided wasn’t needed to make the mountains.
According to the information Nate had dug up, most of the hills were under the protection of the Bureau of Land Management, and were set aside for public use. But there was an area toward the north end that had been claimed by the military, and cordoned off decades ago.
Yellowhammer, Quinn thought.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Nate said, pointing across the highway at a dirt road leading off into the hills.
Quinn glanced at his odometer. They were 4.7 miles north of Lone Pine. “Mileage is right.”
The map Peter had sent them indicated that the road they had just passed was the only direct approach to the facility’s entrance. Chances were good that whoever was running it now had security in place to warn them the minute someone headed their way.
They went a couple miles farther up the divided road, then looped back using a dirt access road between the two strips of asphalt. Besides the main entrance to Yellowhammer, the map highlighted several other roads that led into the hills.
There was one that came within a half mile of the Yellowhammer road before turning back north. Quinn pulled to the side of the highway, a few car lengths away from where it met the highway. He could see that the dirt road cut a straight line across the barren expanse between the highway and where the hills jutted upward, where it then disappeared into a gap between some boulders.
Nate reached into the rear seat, and retrieved the electronics sniffer from his backpack. It looked a little like a palm-size TV remote, and was able to detect electrical signals up to a hundred feet away.
“Be right back,” he said.
He got out, then jogged over to where the dirt road began. Quinn thought he detected a bit of a limp. But maybe it was just Nate’s new gait.
Dammit, you’ve got to let this go, Quinn thought. He’s going to be fine.
Nate disappeared behind the downward slope just beyond the shoulder, then reappeared two minutes later. Again, there was the limp as he ran back to the car.
“It’s clear,” he said as he climbed in. “No trip wires. Didn’t pick up any signals, either.”
“Good,” Quinn said as he put the BMW back in drive.
Up until the dirt road entered the rocky hills, it was a smooth ride. But the moment they passed between the boulders they had seen from the highway, things changed.
Ruts and erosion had deteriorated the surface of the road to the point where Quinn had to take it down to a near crawl. Even then, several times the BMW’s tires smacked the top of the wheel wells. The rocks that lined the way were also a danger. They undulated in a random pattern, often coming within inches of banging into the side of Quinn’s car.
